Wednesday, October 04, 2017

Sean Hannity said it was "beyond shameful" to see late night hosts, celebrities and left-wing Democrats politicize the Las Vegas massacre.

Hannity said several celebrities bashed President Trump and Republicans for their support of the National Rifle Association, with some appearing to link the Fairfax, Va. organization with the shooting....

"They want to disarm all of us," Hannity said of those who played politics in the wake of the massacre.

Col. Tony Shaffer said the Las Vegas massacre appears to be a "very deliberate act of terror" with "political" motivations for shooter Stephen Paddock.

Shaffer said there are many parallels between the attack and the one carried out against Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) and other Republicans by James Thomas Hodgkinson, who volunteered for left-wing causes.

He called the country music festival a "politically-selected target," saying that Paddock could have chosen it because of the fact many country fans are Trump supporters or pro-Second Amendment type people.

Shaffer said that Paddock could have viewed the attack as a "legitimate target of political expression... the very reason Hodgkinson did what he did."

In December, it was reported that Shaffer might join the Trump administration as a senior Defense Department intelligence official. Shaffer has ties to Mike Flynn, who'd been named Trump's national security adviser.

[Shaffer] is connected to retired Army Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn, the incoming White House National Security Adviser, through their joint service in Afghanistan as well as The London Center, a New York-based conservative think tank where Shaffer is vice president for strategic initiatives and operations. At a banquet in September, Shaffer presented Flynn, a senior fellow at the center, with a leadership award.

Shaffer, like Flynn, has a conspiratorial bent:

In 2012, Shaffer claimed—falsely—that President Obama was "in the White House Situation Room in real-time watching" the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya....

Shaffer ... claimed in a November [2016] radio interview that “15 to 17 percent” of Middle East and North African refugees “are ISIS," or agents of the Islamic State militant group.

He's also convinced that the Obama administration deliberately wiretapped Donald Trump, and he's referred to this (on Fox, naturally) as "Soviet-level wrongdoing."

Last night he said this:

It was a politically selected target... The perception was there was going to be a lot of pro-gun folks there, Trump supporters, at this concert. So therefore, I believe the perception was, by the shooter, by the individual who did this, by Paddock, that this was a legitimate target of political expression.... the left has now encouraged the use of violence as an extension and use of political speech.... There was no violence perpetrated against Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton during the run-ups to this elections.
So this has become a feature of desensitization by the left, the Kathy Griffith [sic] beheading, fake beheading, of the president, things like this, are what's pushing a lot of folks to believe now that violence is an acceptable piece -- is politically justified.

And in response to a question from host Martha MacCallum about ISIS's claim of responsibility:

The FBI dismissing terror within the first hours of the investigation was completely insane. The FBI has no way of knowing. I mean, for goodness sake, the special counsel's been investigating the president's team for a year looking at Russia collusion. How does the FBI come to a conclusion there's no terror link? Especially now, Martha, in light of the hundred-thousand-dollar transfer to the Philippines. I'm sure he wasn't sending that money for water buffalo preservation.

Shaffer made no mention of guns. I guess that would have been politicizing the tragedy.

The gunman who murdered at least 59 people at a country-music concert on Sunday might have originally targeted another Las Vegas music festival held the previous weekend, according to a senior law enforcement source.

Stephen Paddock rented multiple condos overlooking the annual Life Is Beautiful Festival, which this year was headlined by Lorde and Chance the Rapper, said the source, who is not directly involved in the investigation but has been briefed on its progress.